Time lapse video of woman with HIV/AIDS

Just noticed this powerful advertisement from the Topsy Foundation. It was one of the winners at TED's "Ad's Worth Spreading" contest, which is generally worth checking out.
This particular video does a great job (with a lovely twist at the end) at showing the effectiveness of HIV antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). There's also a followup video you can view that checks in on the woman (Selinah) as well as chatting with the folks behind the video.
Although I realize that the ARVs have been made possible by the work done in the pharmaceutical industry, and that there is a chance that Topsy's programs are facilitated by kind donations from the same industry, it's still a pity that there isn't a more sustainable system for the provision of such drugs to developing countries. Pity that these sorts of medicines are usually priced way too high for individuals like Selinah, which is why so many go untreated and so many die. Pity also that laws like Bill C-393 (which aim to explore different ways to create that sustainable market and lower that price) are being deliberately stalled in government so as to guarantee not being passed.
That kind of unfortunate reality deserves a megafacepalm.

AIDS will stop in Africa when women have some actual rights, institutionalized sexualized violence is no longer an SOP, and raping infants isn’t seen as a potential cure for the disease.

All the retrovirals in the world won’t change that.

If we carpet-bombed the entire continent with retrovirals it wouldn’t stop AIDS.

People stop AIDS, not drugs.

And, FWIW, the effects of AIDS cannot be “reversed.” They can be arrested, but pending a cure, someone with AIDS will have AIDS until the day they die.

Yes, you can blame the Church and Islam for a lot of the trouble–and I do. However, pouring money into AIDS treatment rather than prevention in Africa just feels like a bottomless money pit sometimes. Until women are given at least some space away from being chattel and subject to standardized brutality new cases will keep arising.

And that kind of change needs to come from within the afflicted countries themselves, and under the current circumstances, it needs to come from the men.

blueelm would yet be in error; for there is in fact a perfectly valid argument for denying a patient pain medication: those situations in which the use of that pain medication, itself, would further endanger the patient’s health, well-being and /or chances for recovery.

Pain is to be relieved in every case – except for those situations just described.

The patient’s well-being must be the sole star by which physicians – and others – guide the course of prescribed treatment.

And the patient must then also agree, in the absence of emergency circumstances, before the voyage begins.

FFS, pain won’t kill you most of the time. That’s as valid an argument against the sale of any pain medication as anything.

Clearly you have never experienced a bad migraine or cluster headache. People in extreme pain are not only capable of killing themselves, they are capable of killing YOU if you are going to try to prevent them from obtaining pain meds.

You can’t think properly when you are having a severe migraine. Clinically, the brain wave patterns are extremely similar to epilepsy. It’s not like a headache, it’s like the world continuously exploding into glittering flying razor blades while screaming clydesdales stampede across the surface of your brain, each hoof leaving a sucking, bleeding hole in the fabric of your mind. It is simply not possible for a person who has not experienced it to comprehend what it feels like to endure a really bad one.

The up side of this is that mere physical pain becomes laughably trivial; I cut my hand with my table saw last week (no major damage, just a couple notched fingertips) and it didn’t particularly bother me. Migraineurs generally won’t suffer shock from injuries unless they lose a significant amount of blood. But it’s not worth it, really. I’ve broken my face, all my fingers and toes, both arms and a wrist, cracked my nose and ribs, been stabbed in the eye and had an eye gouged out of my head, dislocated a shoulder and both knees, torn my left eardrum beyond repair, and had a couple of concussions, been torn up pretty badly by dogs, had holes in both lungs, and generally been physically mauled and battered. I’d rather have fifty of any of those injuries than have a particularly bad migraine; the pain’s not even comparable.

Restriction of trade in medicine is the most horrible example of callous authoritarianism I can think of. In an enlightened society, it would not be legal to patent anything that can be remotely considered therapeutic. All medicine should be automatically in the public domain; human nature will always keep medicine highly profitable without a need for so-called “intellectual property” laws, simply because people love their children.

It’s wrong to deny patients treatment for their diseases that will make the symptoms of that disease better.

Yeah, if they will make it worse that’s different. But the argument that it isn’t really “curing” their disease is bullshit just as the argument that pain meds are pointless on the grounds they don’t cure anything is bullshit.

Fantastic video. The issue is not as simple as lowering the costs of ARVs, though. (“Pity that these sorts of medicines are usually priced way too high for individuals like Selinah, which is why so many go untreated and so many die.”)

My mom works in the capital city of an East African country with some of the most vulnerable populations: displaced civil war refugees, abandoned boys living on the streets, prostituted women and their children, physically handicapped people who are forced to be homeless due to discrimination. The majority of these people are HIV positive. There are ARVs available in free clinics throughout the city, however, the people my mom works with have inconsistent access. (I’m pretty sure it’s a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant that facilitates the free drugs.) There’s a huge culture of bribery- many of the workers in the clinics throw up some arbitrary red tape or flat-out ask for bribes when the people show up for their dose. Of course, a population this marginalized doesn’t have the money to pay off some corrupt official.

I’m not sure what the solution is- maybe some zero-value currency to shame the clinic workers out of their bribery? Either way, it’s not just an issue of cost. The system is corrupt and looks the other way for a large chunk of their population.

This is why I kind of want to slap those who say AIDS treatments aren’t something we should fund because they “only prolong suffering” instead of providing a cure. Like there’s any goddamn medical treatment in the universe that can do more than prolong the inevitable.

Great video! I’ve worked in health care x 25 years, and remember when all AIDS treatment was palliative, entire wards of hospitals dedicated to emaciated young people dying slowly and painfully. That this is allowed to continue in any part of the world now that there are effective treatments is unconscionable.

Well, there is a reason it is called civilization, and there is a reason why we’ve a rather large brain, one capable of compassion and thought. We are not brutes, and we do not live in a jungle – we live in a society that is built on cooperation, and believe it or not, some of us enjoy taking care of one another. It is what makes us human.

Death is inevitable, for us all, and yet, I would not hesitate to make the lives of my parents and grandparents and other older relatives as comfortable as I can. So, if it is inevitable for someone with HIV, as well, why not make their lives better as well?

It is what separates us, and it takes an enlightened mind to know this. If anything, I feel bad for *you*.

This is how survival of a species deals with a fatal, communicable virus…it allows people to die.

Good lord, no. In the most severe outbreaks, survival depends on people being quarantined, and they may end up dying there; but when it is possible you still try to prevent that. If something is not dangerous enough that the people need to be quarantined, it is definitely not dangerous enough to let them die. Survival of the species is a horrible red herring.

Education and reform are needed, but they are not exclusive to providing drugs in the mean time. It’s hardly the right message to tell people gender violence is wrong and at the same time abandon its victims without further aid. How is it people become so heartless when they talk about Africa?